With regards to the DNC revelations, I'm not sure it's so much a new development, as a reversion to old Tammany Hall style machine politics. - not that I'm entirely sure that the machine wasn't employing those tactics in all the intervening years, just perhaps doing so less blatantly and covering their tracks better. Now, though, the sordid deals are not getting brokered face-to-face in smoky back rooms or over mostly untraceable phone conversations, but are leaving digital footprints that can't easily be scrubbed by the politically, if not technically, adept.
>>douche+(OP)
If you read Megan McArdle, her hypothesis is that parties have to resort to these mechanics as they no longer have more overt methods of controlling members.